Recently I have spent a lot more time looking, reading, listening and taking things in, rather than generating more content.

What I have seen is an enormous number of people trying to game the system, no matter what that “system” is. Posting pointless comments to blogs in the hope of getting another mililiter of Google-juice, writing a single post or comment and publishing it in several different places… etc.

And it makes me sad for two reasons:

It increases the amount of noise and junk on the internet. It is getting remarkably difficult to find valuable comments amongst all the “social media experts” and real estate agents creating information-free posts in the vain hope of getting a bit more visibility.

They actually think these techniques they learned from a book, blog post, or $425 “SEO Optimization Class” will actually work! Don’t they see the self-canceling nature of these efforts? Are they really so myopic that they think other people are not doing the exact same thing?

If I could say one thing to all of these people as a unit, it would be “Everyone is good at something. Find what you are good at and share openly and honestly and in the spirit of giving. This is the only sustainable way to move forward.”